This chapter was edited by Gladiusx.
"...lypso."
Calypso groaned as Hera's distant voice echoed in her ear. She had never felt so exhausted in her very long life, and all she wanted was just to sleep.
"Calypso."
But the incessant voice and the warm hand shaking her shoulder would not go. Why was Hera waking her up when she always slept in?
"Calypso! You need…"
Someone lifted her head and gently opened her mouth. Calypso struggled to open her eyes, wondering if Hera was pranking her, when a heavenly liquid fell on her lips, and she greedily gulped. A straw was in her mouth, and the immortal witch greedily drank the sweet Nectar as she felt life and vigor flooding her body once more. Soon, her drink was finished, and the immortal witch moaned, the sound halfway between satisfaction and frustration. She opened her eyes, finding the tired green eyes of a red-haired girl holding her close.
"Calypso, you need to wake up. Something weird is going on, and I have a terrible feeling that if you don't wake up and do something, we will regret it forever."
Instantly, memories of the past few days flooded the Queen of Ogygia's mind, and she remembered! The visit from Prometheus and Hecate, Hera's gift, her hero arriving on a ship with friends, the ritual, the Fates, and Nyx's interference.
She stood up with a tired groan as Rachel supported her and shoved a square of Ambrosia in her hands. Calypso ate it hungrily, feeling even more vitality coursing through her. Once finished, the younger girl handed her another flask of Nectar that she enthusiastically drank, feeling more awake yet still slightly light-headed.
"Fwah, that tasted heavenly! Thank you, Rachel." Hera's daughter tried to smile, but a weak grimace came out instead.
Calypso looked around; Percy and the others were unconscious, while Ogygia remained frozen thanks to her spell. A sigh of relief rolled off her tongue as she saw the rhythmic rise and fall of their chests; they were exhausted, not dead. Yet Hera's daughter was staring at the distance. Following her gaze, the daughter of Atlas tilted her head in confusion. The sky was a deep purple void, with a dozen bright spots that seemed to blink at her in curiosity. Anywhere she looked on the horizon, the same twelve stars would appear before her, standing like a dozen shining orange gems amidst a sea of dark amethyst.
"What are they?" Rachel's green eyes didn't move from the stars.
"… I might be mistaken, and I dearly hope I am, but those are realms," Calypso uttered, feeling her ichor freeze in her insides like frost on a stream.
This had not been the plan…
"Realms? As in, planets?"
"Yes and no. They are dimensions or worlds with unique sets of laws and domains different from our own, but each should have a planet that acts as a nexus point… at least, that's what I learned from our realm."
Rachel gawked, her eyes wide and lips quivered. "Why do I hear things from them?"
"Hear?" Calypso turned to the girl, only to freeze. The threads of destiny were so thick around Hera's daughter that they looked like a cloak. Calypso could still feel the power of her Destiny spell inundating Ogygia, with many threads rising out of the island, as well as herself and her friends, like tentative tentacles that tasted the stars in the void. What was strange, however, was that they all went through Rachel first, even the thread of Destiny that came out of Calypso.
"Yeah, all of them seem to be beckoning us, but I know they are all terrible choices, yet we need to make one soon, or else we're doomed!"
"How can you tell?"
"I don't know, I just can!" Rachel uttered the words with iron surety.
Calypso frowned, wondering how the girl was getting such premonitions, before her eyes widened as she remembered her discussion with her uncle. Could Rachel be…? The immortal sorceress growled inwardly for not listening to Prometheus when he offered knowledge. She shook her head; now wasn't the time for regrets.
"J-Just what's going on, Calypso?" The red-haired girl turned to her with wet eyes and bit her lips. "W-Weren't we supposed to appear on Earth? Why are we suddenly in some v-void…"
Calypso grabbed her before she collapsed and held her in a tight embrace, even as the girl finally lost control over her emotions and burst into hysterical sobs. Rachel bowled her eyes out as she held on as if her life depended on it. The immortal witch patted her head and rubbed soothing circles on her back, preventing her from falling to the ground. She bit her lips in frustration as she recalled the clear-sighted nature of her adopted niece. Not even Calypso could fathom what the fourteen-year-old girl had witnessed in Khaos and what she could see now. All she could do was hold her close as the girl cried her stress and worries into her bosom, and Calypso comforted her as best she could, humming a soothing tune for the girl.
After a few minutes, Rachel finally calmed down, and the Queen of Ogygia continued to hum in her ear as she ran her hands through the girl's red locks. "Are you better now?"
"Yeah…" The green-eyed maiden sniffled then gently moved away from her, red-rimmed eyes and flushed face looking away in shame as Calypso wiped her tears from her dress. "Sorry for ruining your dress."
"It's no issue." They stood up, careful not to bump into the rest of their friends, for they still had to remain inside the circle. "I can always make a new one, and maybe you could help me this time."
Rachel smiled weakly before frowning. "What happened back then? Last I remember was the Fates appearing, and then you started the ritual. Did it fail?"
"Yes and no… " Calypso proceeded to explain what happened after Rachel collapsed. The girl was still in shock and stricken by the fact they were no longer home, possibly forever, but the immortal witch sensed she was still bothered by something else. "Do you want to talk about it, what you saw in Khaos I mean?"
For a moment, Calypso feared the girl would panic again as her eyes glazed in the distance and her lips quivered, but Rachel finally spoke.
"…It was a terrifying being. More beast than any kind of creature I've seen. So many eyes in all the colors you could imagine, and skin as white as curdled milk. Limbs and tentacles, it was as if the beast was unsure what form to take. It haunted me in my dreams, waking me up to find you all unconscious and the void staring at me… It wouldn't even talk, despite having a mouth - more a maw filled with fangs and tongues. It just gazed at me with its endless melting faces bulging out of its body and the vacant eyes–"
"Shhh, it's okay now." Calypso quickly hugged the clear-sighted demigod before she got another panic attack. "We won't have to worry about that beast ever again."
Rachel weakly held her and shook her head. "No, you don't understand. It's still here, staring at us."
Calypso felt her heart jumping to her throat as she stared at the girl in shock. "Where?"
"The Void! I can tell it's looking at us like…" her voice choked, "like bugs that crossed its path, and it wonders if it should squash us or watch us in interest." The immortal witch warily turned to where Rachel was staring, but she still saw and felt nothing but the dark purple void no matter how hard she stretched her senses. "What should we do, Calypso?"
"… You said you sense that we need to make a choice?" Rachel nodded, her face still terrified. It broke Calypso's heart to see Hera's daughter so… broken. "What choice should it be?"
"We need to choose a world to go to before the beast loses interest and decides to squash us after all. Hopefully, it would just let us go, like when you let a squirrel run away from your path… but it could decide we would make good pets, or worse, a snack! Either way, we are ducked!"
Calypso bit her lip. She was not a seer, but if she had the time, energy, and materials, she could have divined a way to find which world was most suitable for them to travel to. It was terrible that they would never get to return home, but that only meant they would need to find a similarly suitable world for them to survive, if not thrive, in. She owed at least that much to Rachel and the others.
The Queen of Ogygia tried to look where Rachel had told her the Beast was staring from but saw nothing. Yet her gaze quickly moved away; it would not be wise to provoke a being of the Abyss.
"You will have to make that choice, Rachel." The girl gaped in shock, but Calypso gazed at the dozen lights in the void - their only options for salvation. "Those realms all look and feel the same to me. A lot of danger to be certain, but I feel I could survive them if I have a chance to get back into fighting form… or I could find myself meeting an ignoble death."
"Yeah… demigods might be stronger than mortals, but if even you think those realms are dangerous, then I doubt we would be able to survive whatever monsters dwell there."
"I'm sure Percy could hold his own against monsters and worse."
"Percy doesn't count! He's a monster in human form." Rachel chortled, and Calypso smiled as the girl seemed to shrug away the melancholy and fear that plagued her mind. "So it will come down to my sight?"
"I'm afraid so, but know that whatever your choice shall be, it would be substantially better than me groping in the dark and most likely provoking some eldritch monstrosity." Rachel chuckled weakly, and Calypso stood behind her, hugging her and placing her head over her shoulder. "I shall fully support you, so don't hesitate. We will need to connect our powers to be in perfect sync, however."
The clear-sighted demigod bit her lips for a heartbeat before nodding to herself and slapping her cheeks to concentrate. Calypso took that as assent and sighed as she connected her magic with Rachel's. It was a more intimate thing compared to the ritual circle they were in, and suddenly; both of them could tell their emotions, their thoughts, their heartbeats were in sync, and their magic was one. If she focused enough, Calypso would have been capable of learning Rachel's darkest secrets. Still, the current situation barely had the immortal witch consider that intrusive thought before shaking her head to focus.
Sporting a determined frown, Rachel gazed silently at the void, looking at each bright star in turn, her thoughts coming to Calypso in a jumbled mess that gave her a headache; a dark world, a dead world, a slow world, a chaotic world, an endless world, and so on until she went through them all. Hera's daughter went through the dozen worlds twice more, wincing when her gaze seemed to wander to a certain spot where Calypso wagered the Abyssal Beast dwelled.
Finally, Rachel settled on one of the realms. "That one."
"Any specific reason?" Calypso stared intently at the world Rachel chose, yet she could not divine anything different from it compared to the others.
"The nexus point you mentioned, the planet looked and felt like it had a lot of water." Rachel shrugged before looking sideways at her, her lips widening as her gaze went past her toward the sleeping figure of her hero. "If we go to a potentially hostile world, then might as well pick one where Percy would feel at home in… and hopefully kick ass while he's at it, for I could tell there were monsters that were even more scary than the Titans."
Calypso giggled as she tightened her hold on the girl. "As good a reason as any. I'm moving the island now, but I will still need you to guide me. Just think of where you want me to go, and I will be able to follow."
Rachel had barely nodded before Calypso willed Ogygia to move towards the realm of their choice, the runes carved into it shining brilliantly as she started to feel the drain on her meager powers. She had not recovered enough for such a stunt but focused on Rachel's directions as the shining realms seemed to flicker away in the void, yet they could not hide from the seer. Moving her home was surprisingly easy and Calypso felt they passed an invisible threshold as the chosen star stopped fluttering.
"We need to hurry," Rachel's voice thickened with worry. "It does not like our escape."
All Calypso could do was hum out an agreement and focus all of her dwindling powers on sailing Ogygia faster into the star. As beads of sweat pooled over her brow and her breathing became heavy, the starlight turned blinding.
Immediately, exhaustion like nothing Calypso had ever felt hit her like an angry cyclops. She nearly collapsed if not for her hold on Rachel, who was trying to tell her something, but the immortal witch could only hear a loud buzzing in her ears. Even their thoughts felt scrambled, and all she got from the girl was a feeling of sudden lethargy similar to her own and awe at what she saw.
Calypso could feel the threads of Destiny unraveling from her and Ogygia in an explosion that none could feel or hear except for herself… and perhaps Rachel. Hera's daughter shook her, and finally, with a Titanic effort, Calypso opened her eyes to find they were floating in space over a massive stormy planet. She could not tell how long they had spent in space, it could have been seconds, or it could have been decades. Most likely years, unless that planet rotated faster than a spintop.
Speaking of the planet, the moment the island approached it, the planet slowed its spinning significantly. Enough so for Calypso to glean more of its topography, but she couldn't gather much, only a strange red line of rocks and many, many islands.
"Calypso, we have to steer the island somewhere, or we will crash!"
She tried to reply, but only a tired moan came out of her mouth. Nevertheless, the Queen of Ogygia steered her home towards the ocean, following Rachel's directions and trusting in her powers of foresight. She had no idea why she was so exhausted, but Calypso could already feel how foreign this world and its magic were. It took everything out of her to keep the spells holding her island intact running, yet she would be drained to death at this rate. She only hoped the last of the Mist around her island would obscure them from any deity in this new world they were essentially invading.
"We're nearly there, Calypso. That island looks safest, and it doesn't have any storms."
Barely focusing on where Rachel was guiding her, Calypso found she was steering Ogygia into a massive mountain with a deep crater on its top. It could have been an extinct volcano, yet she was too tired to do anything aside from steering her home. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Ogygia touched down on the crater, the bedrock fusing with the mountain, causing the island to shake, and the spells to shatter. Rachel lost her balance, and both of them crumbled on the ground.
Too tired to even think, Calypso closed her eyes and fell into slumber.
P*o*D
As the crew entered the realm, the threads of Destiny formerly held in a tight leash by Calypso unraveled and exploded to all corners of the world. Without any deities to control such a seismic wave of destiny, and with time frozen on Ogygia, many people's fates had irrecoverably changed. Whether those changes would be for the better or worse, none would ever know.
The hidden kingdom.
A young white-haired girl walked through the ruins of a burned castle, searching for anything of value that would connect her to the man who impressed her so. Nothing remained of the castle and its residents aside from corpses and ruin. The new ruler had those corpses strung up and paraded for the people to see and despair, yet the girl did not care as her amber eyes inspected the castle for anything interesting. After many hours of seeking and finding nothing, she was forced to give up when her father sent for her. As her father's men escorted her away from the castle, a gentle breeze sent a bound book toppling from a hidden shelf and down the mountain to be buried under mud and dirt.
Where dreams are made.
"You sure that was a good decision, Captain?"
"It wasn't like I had an alternative. My daughter has bonded far too much with them, and I don't have the heart to rip her apart from them." The Captain sighed sadly for a heartbeat before tearing a large chunk of meat from one hand and drinking deeply from a mug of beer with the other. "She will have a better life on land than out on the seas, especially with what we intend to do."
"… I was speaking more about your hat. It was entrusted to you, was it not? The kid has a lot to live up to with such a storied lineage."
"Ah, that? Don't worry about it, my friend. I believe that he will grow and become one of the finest the world has ever seen. As you said, his lineage is legendary."
"Suit yourself. I wager he would make plenty of girls cry, however, with the way those two clung to him."
"That too, Dahahahahaha."
The captain and his first mate laughed genially as their ship sailed through the calm seas. The rest of their crew were still hungover from their latest party. As they sailed into the setting sun, the captain twitched as if he felt something on the edge of his senses.
"What is it? Your Haki pick something?"
"… No, it must have been my imagination."
Where dreams die.
The tall and lithe man grunted as he finally managed to cut off his legs to free himself from the seastone shackles. Breathing heavily, he could feel the power of his devil fruit returning, and he quickly tied his maimed legs to stop the bleeding. A guard's corpse lay on the ground just beyond the cell, with his neck snapped, and the golden-haired prisoner chuckled deeply at the windfall he received. For years, he had been waiting to escape. The closest he had gotten to was shortly after his imprisonment by those wimps Garp and Sengoku. Yet fate had other plans, and he had rotted here with nothing to do but train his Haki, introspectively contemplate his life choices, and plot for the future.
Until this morning…or evening or noon… it had been years since he had seen the sun or knew which time of the day it was.
The guard had come too close to his cell during feeding time and taunted him, yet the golden lion was not broken for a weakling to poke him and live. Sadly, while the guard had the keys to his cell, he did not have the ones for his shackles, and the former pirate admiral was forced to cut off his legs using the guard's mediocre sword. His skin, muscles, and bones had long been tempered through the decades of training and fighting he had endured, and even after years of imprisonment and the seastone weakening him, it took a lot for him to cut through his legs to free himself.
"Heh, you really are a legendary pirate."
The voice came from the cell across from him once he floated out of his own, and Golden Lion Shiki grinned at his fellow prisoner.
"Of course I am! I told you that I would escape, and my offer still stands. What say you? Would you rather rot here in Level Six or join me as I rebuild my heavenly kingdom, Bullet? We can bring havoc and chaos to the world. Both marines and pirates shall tremble before our might!"
In the cell's darkness, a massive and muscular man grinned, his teeth shining brightly. "Both marines and pirates, you say? Kahahahaha. Sure, then, why not."
Shiki laughed loudly as he opened the cell and used his devil fruit power to float the stones holding the seastone chains from the ground. Douglas Bullet easily dragged them behind him as they left the cell, Shiki admiring the man's diligent training over the years of imprisonment, which resulted in him barely feeling exhaustion anymore from the seastone.
"Sadly, unless you want me to cut off your hands, you will have to make do with this, at least until we find the keys, or my swords."
"Then how about you free me, and I shall join you? I can get those shackles off and more."
Shiki and Bullet turned to another cell, ignoring the clamor of the rest of the prisoners, who had awakened to the prison break. Inside the cell was a large man with sallow skin and a long face with a wide-bridged nose.
"Oh? Have you gotten tired of being head jailer, Shiryu? That brat Magellan had just been promoted and would eventually let you out again to cover for him… until you went on another murder spree, Jihahahaha."
"They were all weakling scum, and my bloodlust had to be sated somehow." Shiryu grinned, "Magellan may act disgusted, but he secretly approves… and so do the higher-ups, or else I wouldn't be released every time they needed help."
"And why decide to join pirates?" Bullet folded his massive arms, easily dangling the stone blocks holding the seastone chains. "Why should we trust you?"
"I'm sick of killing weaklings who can't fight back. I crave real battle and slaughter, not this hellhole with no prospects for promotion. Release me, and I will join you, so long as you promise me an interesting life."
"… Good enough reason for me."
Shiki also shrugged and opened his cell, coating his hands with Armament Haki. The golden lion had spent years perfecting his technique and easily tore off the mundane steel chains and shackles binding the former head jailer. Shiryu patted the dust from his prisoner garb as he followed them out. The many prisoners of Level Six of Impel Down were now awake and clamoring to be released.
"Let me borrow this for a moment," Shiryu of the Rain took the sword from Shiki and turning to Douglas Bullet. "Hold your hands out where the chains connect to the shackles."
The massive man frowned but did as he was told; the former jailer closed his eyes and focused as the sword was coated with Armament Haki. "HAH!"
With a swing of his now blackened sword, the diamond-hard seastone shackles were cut enough for Bullet to use his incredible strength to rip the weakened hinges from his arm.
"Much better, thanks."
Shiryu nodded, even as he clicked his tongue at the disintegrating sword. "Still need more training, and we will need better weapons and supplies to escape properly. What do you think… Captain?"
Shiki watched his first two recruits with amusement. Back in the day, he could have done something similar, but it's been too long since he held a blade, and he did not feel as confident in his skills. More training would solve that issue in due time.
He turned to the rest of the prisoners, banging on their doors and hollering for release, and unleashed his Conqueror's Haki to silence them. A couple of other Conqueror's users replied in kind, causing him to grin in excitement; Oh, just the idea of having people like that on his crew or even let loose in the world made him giddy. "What do you think, boys? We will need a crew to man whatever ship we commandeer."
"I say the more troublemakers we release, the better. We can use the distraction, especially since we can't count on Magellan being stuck in his toilet."
"You hear that, you lowlifes? You will be our distraction, and whoever survives to the top shall join me to freedom as I form my kingdom and eventually take over the world!"
The roars of approval caused Shiki's grin to widen maniacally. He might have failed in becoming Pirate King, but he was still a pirate first and foremost. What was it that Roger said?
The most important reason a pirate sets sail is for freedom! After years of imprisonment, freedom sounded more appetizing than the finest wine or the most buxom women.
Then came fortune, booty, glory… and world domination!
.
.
.
Ten kilometers under the seas
"Madam Shyarly! Are you alright?"
A beautiful young mermaid held her head in pain as her scrying was interrupted. She ignored the fussing mermaid as she tried to grab onto her crystal ball and continue divining what that strange wave in her mind was about. The moment she touched the crystal ball, however, it shattered to dust, causing everyone's eyes to widen.
"What does this mean, Madam Shyarly?"
"… I don't know, but I fear that my scrying abilities are gone now."
Shyarly ignored the chatter of the mermen and mermaids around her as she bit her lips in thought. She wasn't concerned with the loss of her crystal; it was merely a focus to her ability, and hers was an extremely advanced form of Observation Haki that did not truly need any tool to work. Still, she would not be able to foresee the future anymore, but perhaps that would not be a bad thing. All the expectations and pressure from being a seer was grinding on her patience. Perhaps now she could open that cafe she dreamed of, and her brother would stop being such a grouch.
Who was she kidding? He's probably brooding in his cell in Impel Down, waiting for boss Jinbei to free him. It was one of the last things she saw in her crystal ball, but Shyarly could only think about the very last thing she saw just now.
A green-eyed human.
P*o*D
Somewhere in the Calm Belt
"I told you, Bryant. I told you that sailing through the Calm Belt would be a disaster in the waiting," a very tall and stout man with two elbows lamented.
"Like we had a choice, Roscoe. The boss said to bring that idiot's head, even if we had to chase him to the ends of the earth; you know we can't deny the boss after accepting a mission, or it would be our heads on the line." A thin and shorter, long-legged man replied with a grimace as he steered their ship through the waters of the Calm Belt as they followed their quarry. "Besides, we've only been here for a few days."
"And look where that brought us?! In less than two days, our poor schooner was destroyed by a Sea King, and through sheer dumb luck, we managed to get most of the men on rowboats and through sheer fucking luck, and rowing blindly through the night, we found the prince's steamboat stopping for the night!" With every word, the long-armed Roscoe's voice sounded even more ludicrous, and Bryant had to admit that things had gotten far too dicey over the last few days. "Even though we managed to take over the boat, we're quickly running out of fuel, and the fucker and his bitch escaped on a skiff!"
"Hey, you were all for it when the offer came. Fifty million Berri for the head of some disgraced royal!" The long-legged helmsman finally blew up, attracting the attention of the rest of the pirate crew. "The boss spent far too much effort and influence ingratiating himself to that big wig from Ilisia and this was our windfall. All we needed was to make sure he had an accident at sea, but someone decided they wanted the loot instead of making sure the fucker didn't escape on the rowboat! Even the fifty million bounty won't be enough to recoup the loss of our ship, you greedy bastard. If our target gets away, we're fucked."
"Hey, can you blame me? That debaucherous prince is known for being a profligate hedonist. There was no way he would not be hiding treasure in his ship, especially given where he was going."
"He also has his brutish bodyguard, who even now is rowing that fucking skiff so hard that we could barely see them on the horizon."
A lecherous grin bloomed on Roscoe's face. "I can't wait to get my hands on that woman of his. I don't know how they breed or train those Royal Guards, but that bitch has the juiciest pair of tits I've seen in a long time."
"How could you even tell if she covered herself in armor all the time?"
"Heh, you were on the boat while I did most of the work. The bitch was bathing during our night raid." The large man tapped the high-quality sword on his hip, "no armor, no shield, and no sword; she was barely dressed when we attacked. And considering you managed to shoot that prince, this will be easy as–"
A strangled scream came from the bow of the ship, causing the helmsman to grimace again. "Did you have to keelhaul the captain, Roscoe?"
"The fool fought back and killed a few of our men. Worse, he jettisoned all the coal into the water, and now we are running on fumes. Not even slaughtering his crew before him was enough; the men wanted to vent their frustrations." Roscoe from the Longarmed tribe shrugged, even as the rest of the men cheered in appreciation. "He should be dying soon, and it's not like you to be merciful, Bryant."
"I don't give a fuck how he dies, but he might attract the Sea Kings."
Roscoe's eyes widened as he unholstered his flintlock. "Good point," he headed to the bow of the ship and shot the wretch dead, much to the crew's disappointment. The sound of a man suffering a slow death always helped to stave off the boredom.
"Land ahoy!"
The sudden shout from the crow's nest had Roscoe freeze. Pulling out a spyglass, the long-armed assassin found a blurry landmass in the distance and their target rowing even harder towards it. He clicked his tongue at the sight of the skiff; that female knight had been rowing nonstop for the better part of a day. Roscoe grinned; that would make taking her once she's exhausted easier. Such a woman could always fetch a good price in the slave markets, but not before he had his bit of fun first.
"Steady as she goes, boys. We might have found a good spot to have fun once we catch those two." The men cheered, and he could feel his partner correcting their course. Within an hour, he could finally see the island.
The first thing that grabbed his attention was the mountain, easily over four kilometers tall. Yet no matter how much Roscoe stared through his spyglass, he could not see the summit through the cloudy sky. Or was it mist? In the Calm Belt? Shrugging carelessly, he inspected the rest of the island. It was large and wide, with lush forests, rocky hills, and hidden valleys. Such a rich island would have been settled and turned into a prosperous kingdom if it weren't in the Calm Belt.
None of that mattered, for his gaze settled on a large bay surrounded by treacherous rocks where the prince's skiff had just rowed deeper towards a cove and beached upon the golden sand. His grin turned devilish when he caught sight of the brown-haired woman in tattered clothes dragging the blonde prince over her shoulders. His grin quickly turned into a scowl as the ship suddenly stopped the moment they entered the rocky water.
"What the hell, Bryant?"
"Out of fuel, you fat fuck."
"Fucking hell, get the dinghies out."
"We ain't got no dinghies in this tiny ass boat. The bitch took the only one."
"Son of a bitch! Fine, then. It's paddling time, boys."
Any protest from his men was silenced once he glared at them, allowing his devil fruit power to surface for a second. Roscoe would not accept any mutinous behavior, and the boys knew it. He just hoped they managed to make it before the bitch went too deep on the island and turned an easy gig into a manhunt.
P*O*D
A meadow in Ogygia
The pegasus whinnied when the island suddenly shook, his tired mate taking the chance to trot away, but the stallion didn't care; he'd already seeded the mare. Some of the regular horses glared at him balefully in the distance, but Blackjack flapped his wings and snorted at them. Weaklings don't get to spread their blood.
And what a day it had been for the stallion. He had a dozen mares he impregnated, and he could have gone for more if not for the island's shaking. He could hardly wait to have more pegasi to race and have fun within a couple of years - and one for that nice girl who knew just how to brush his coat.
Glancing upwards, he thought the sky looked different. A massive wall of rock, nearly a mile high, surrounded the island. It was quite the distance away, not close enough to prevent the sun's rays from shining on the island, but still distracting. Still, the pegasus shivered, as if the temperature dropped by at least twenty degrees.
Feeling worried for his boss, Blackjack flapped his powerful wings and lifted off. He could feel something was different in him, however. It felt easier for him to fly, and his breathing was smoother. The air felt fresher than anything he had ever breathed, and a strong urge to fly away gripped his heart. Shaking his head, he continued on his mission. He could explore those feelings later, but for now, Percy came first.
Blackjack flew around the island searching for them, eventually finding all six of his human friends unconscious near the shiny tree. His worry intensified as he landed near his boss and rubbed his nose to his cheek.
"Boss! Wake up, bossman. Are you alive? Yeah, I can hear you breathing, but are you okay? Hello?"
After several minutes of trying to wake Percy and the rest in vain, Blackjack gave up and whinnied in agitation. Before he could decide on another avenue to wake the humans up, something caught his attention on the tree. The pegasus turned to the silver-barked tree and gazed at its bronze leaves, trying to figure out what distracted him, before his eyes settled on a juicy-looking golden apple. Suddenly remembering his earlier exertions, the winged horse decided he deserved a treat.
Just as he flew to the branch holding the apple and was about to take a bite, the apple shook before transforming into a strangely shaped gray fruit with intricate patterns. Blackjack flapped his wings and tilted his head in confusion before shrugging with a snort. He was still hungry, and a fruit was a fruit. With one large bite, the pegasus consumed the fruit whole, immediately belching and shivering intensely as he descended to the ground and hacked in disgust.
"Tastes like shit!"
And we are finally in One Piece!
The first part of this chapter might be reused if I ever write a similar dimension-hop story featuring Percy and Co.
Changes to the world! I already decided this was AU before I wrote the first chapter. This is how I explain the AUness (is that a word?) of the world.
Characters that should have lived are dead, and vice versa. Movie characters wasted on rubbish plots get a second chance in the real plot of the world. Some characters will even be OOC due to circumstances that were prevented due to Fate.
Finally, the biggest change of them all! Shiki the Golden Lion shall rise again, stronger than ever. I shall write this badass as he should have been written. One Piece faced a serious issue with power creeps due to the introduction of Haki. Shiki will be buffed to be worthy of being a member of the Rocks Pirates, and after spending a few more years reflecting over his life, he would grow to become more.
He will also be less moronic and cartoonishly evil as well. That troupe gets old. Same with Bullet, that dude was wasted in his movie.
There are many many other changes that I could not shove here but will be shown when the right time comes. A couple of major ones were hinted at heavily in this chapter, and I look forward to seeing who would catch them.
If you would like to support me, or read four chapters ahead, join me on my Pat(eo)n under the same penname.